


But Remember It's Only Almost-Freezing

by crispyjenkins



Series: Crispy Writes [7]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: ARC Troopers more in line with 2003 Clone Wars, Ahsoka as Obi-Wan's padawan, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Episode: s04e11 Kidnapped, Episode: s04e12 Slaves of the Republic, Episode: s04e13 Escape From Kadavo, Force Sensitive Boba Fett, M/M, Mace as Big Brother of the Universe, Medic Jango, Mild Mentions of Canon-Typical Violence, Past JangObi now with a side of Pining ™, because I said so
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-22
Updated: 2020-10-22
Packaged: 2021-03-08 21:02:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,498
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27142849
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crispyjenkins/pseuds/crispyjenkins
Summary: He fully intends to duck back out and check in with Mace, though things seem well in hand without him, but then the ARC with Kix takes off his helmet andglares,until Obi-Wan meekly shuffles to the next hoverbed over.He could never refuse Jango, after all."You repainted your armor," he says conversationally, as Jango pulls a scanner from the bandoleer across his chest and has Obi-Wan roll up his right sleeve.
Relationships: Jango Fett/Obi-Wan Kenobi, Obi-Wan Kenobi & Ahsoka Tano
Series: Crispy Writes [7]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1960120
Comments: 28
Kudos: 684





	But Remember It's Only Almost-Freezing

**Author's Note:**

> **Mando'a:**  
>  _buir_ — “parent”, gender neutral  
>  _Mand’alor_ — “Sole ruler”, contended ruler of Mandalore.  
>  _edee —_ “teeth”, “jaws”, used here as an affectionate name for Ahsoka. because she teeth.

It surprises everyone except Obi-Wan that not only does Jango join the clones on the front lines, but he does so as the ARC troopers’ _medic._ That the son of the Mand’alor murdered by the Jedi would allow his kid to be apprenticed by a lifetime Council member is already hard enough for the galaxy at large to swallow; believing that the man who had at once been the most feared bounty hunter in the Outer Rim wouldn’t even ask for a command position? Impossible.

Obi-Wan knows better. Just as Obi-Wan had picked up Soresu because he could not protect his master on Naboo, Jango had learned to put people back together because he could not save his _buir_ on Korda 6. 

Besides, Obi-Wan thinks Mace is a wonderful match for little Boba, even though he’s joining the Jedi older than even Anakin had been. Knowing Mace was among the Jedi to liberate the spice freighter Jango had been sold to, and that he had continued to check in on Jango for years after he got his armor back, Obi-Wan actually finds it rather silly that others on the Council had thought Jango would trust Boba to anyone else. 

Which does leave Obi-Wan in quite the predicament, when less than a year after Anakin's knighting, Mace sends him a new padawan in the middle of a campaign. 

Ahsoka smiles with all canines, and calls Anakin _Skyguy,_ and has to be tricked into wearing more armor because, according to Cody, she is "not to take the General's lack of self-preservation as the status quo, nor as the basis for field safety." Which, rude, Obi-Wan wears plenty of armor when the situation calls for it; he simply doesn't find many situations where plasteel has kept his men or the Jedi from dying horribly.

Letting Ahsoka gallivant around a battlefield in a tube-top without even a cloak, however, is out of the question, and Obi-Wan thinks Waxer does a brilliant job in sizing down the armor to fit their collective padawan over the next few months. Force, had Anakin really been younger than she when he first started taking him on missions?

"Master?"

Obi-Wan blinks, and smiles down at Ahsoka standing next to him, his apprentice looking quite dashing in the orange paint of the 212th. "Sorry, my dear, what were you saying?"

She shrugs, eyeing him suspiciously. "'Was just asking if we would be working with the ARC troopers on Kiros; Captain Fordo said he would show me how to use a blaster rifle next time they were on the _Negotiator."_

The Kaminoans intended for a few ARC troopers to be sent with each battalion, but it had quickly become clear that Jango had not trained them that way. Instead, he had raised and created a strike team so efficient, it would have been a waste to separate them; Obi-Wan knows Jango had hand-picked them from cadets, had searched for a spark in them that the Kaminoans hadn't already snuffed out completely. Jango had been like that once, too.

"I would be surprised if we didn't," Obi-Wan decides on, turning back to observe the 212th loading into the _Negotiator,_ and he would be, because the ARCs are often deployed with Obi-Wan’s men, have been since the Battle of Kamino. "But I have not heard anything from Master Shaak Ti, nor Captain Fordo as of yet."

Ahsoka scrunches up her face into a pout, an amusing show of her age that she usually does not allow. "We'll probably get halfway through the mission and they'll just show up."

Obi-Wan chuckles. “Hm, yes, probably,” he agrees, starting to make his way down to the hangar to join his men with Ahsoka trotting along behind, “but perhaps I can convince Captain Fordo not to surprise us too badly this time.”

When the ARC troopers finally storm the Kadavo Processing Facility with Anakin and the Jedi on their heels, the warden Agruss is already dead.

The sudden swell of Jedi presence is nearly blinding after a month of helplessness, but Obi-Wan can't tap out, not yet. Rex, satisfied and vindictive and _relieved,_ sways dangerously and automatically reaches out to Obi-Wan to steady himself. 

That Rex trusts him enough to not even think about rank before asking for help warms Obi-Wan in ways he doesn't yet have the words for — he wraps Rex's arm around his shoulders and takes half his weight happily.

"Thank you," Obi-Wan finds himself murmuring as he helps Rex towards the doors, and only smiles at the captain's bemused expression. 

"Whatever for, General?" he asks, even as he looks back over their shoulders across the room, to Agruss impaled to his chair with the electrostaff still sparking. Then he returns Obi-Wan’s smile, shaking his head. "That's not very Jedi-like of you, sir."

"I'm afraid I haven't felt much a Jedi since Kiros, my dear." Which is perhaps too honest to allow himself before he's had a proper meal and a full night's rest, but if there is anyone who will understand, it is the man that lived it with him. "We could wait up here for Anakin to find us, but it will likely be a while before they can spare him to start looking; do you think you can keep your feet long enough for us to reach the ground floor?"

Rex snorts and gives a vague wave of his free hand towards the elevators. "Well, I'm certainly not going to wait up here like some damsel, sir, and General Skywalker would kill me if I let you wander around on your own."

"Well!" Obi-Wan laughs, for the first time in weeks, and hitches Rex up to get a better grip on his waist. "In that case, we really should not keep him waiting."

They somehow time it perfectly for what the 187th and the 501st to have just finished rounding up the slavers in the courtyard when he and Rex hobble out of a side door of the warden's tower. Lieutenant Law oversees the Togrutas' move to Mace’s flagship _Solace_ , and Obi-Wan easily picks him and Boba out from the crowd, standing at the base of the loading ramp and speaking with the Kiros colony's governor. Anakin is nowhere to be seen, but Obi-Wan doesn't get the chance to keep looking before Kix spots them from his place by the medical frigate; a shout passes over the nearby clones like a wave, until Kix and an ARC trooper break away to (gently) manhandle both him and Rex to the frigate. 

The 187th's medic, Oro, is already on board seeing to the Togrutas too injured to wait for triage on the _Solace,_ snapping a distracted salute that Obi-Wan quickly waves off as he helps heft Rex onto a hoverbed. He fully intends to duck back out and check in with Mace, though things seem well in hand without him, but the ARC with Kix takes off his helmet and _glares,_ until Obi-Wan meekly shuffles to the next hoverbed over.

He could never refuse Jango, after all. 

"You repainted your armor," he says conversationally, as Jango pulls a scanner from the bandoleer around his chest and has Obi-Wan roll up his right sleeve. 

"'Lost the last set to a sarlacc before our deployment to Kiros," Jango snorts, Concord Dawn accent stronger than any of his clones. "Though it looks like your mission had its fair share of excitement." Running the scanner over the electrical burns on Obi-Wan’s arm, Jango raises an eyebrow at the dried blood on the shoulder of his tunics; Obi-Wan honestly doesn't remember if it's his or not.

And he can only smile at Jango, because even with a decade and a war between them, the corner of Jango's mouth still twitches when he's stressed. "Well, it certainly wasn't boring, my dear," Obi-Wan says, opening the neck of his tunic enough for Jango to stick him with a hypospray that hopefully won't make him _too_ high. "And I can't say I'm looking forward to what is surely going to be a long dip in the bacta tank."

He gets a laugh for that, and can't think of the last time they had done more than make eye contact from opposite sides of a ship. Perhaps it had been Kamino, when Taun We had first sent for the Jedi to meet the army created for them. 

Obi-Wan had rather thought Jango dead until then, when he had disappeared from the galaxy abruptly as if he had never lived in it at all. For a time, Obi-Wan believed he had just gotten cold feet, that finally meeting Anakin made it all a little too personal too quickly, but then even Mace could not get a hold of him and no one had seen a Mandalorian bounty hunter in months.

Their... conversation, Jango's stilted explanations of his absence and of how little he actually knew about the purpose for the clones he helped create, left far too much unsaid, but then Obi-Wan had been sent to Geonosis and, well. It's been nearly two years now, and Obi-Wan isn't sure if he's even seen Jango without his helmet since then. 

His eyes flick over Obi-Wan’s face, the left side of his lips twitching as if knowing exactly what Obi-Wan is thinking — and he might not put it past him. 

"Where are Anakin and Ahsoka?" Obi-Wan hears himself ask, when the silence grows heavy with those unsaid words. And he really would like to check in with his padawan, he can't imagine her last month has been a picnic either.

Jango sticks him with another stim before answering, "Mace sent Skywalker to make sure no slave is missed, and no slaver isn't arrested. As for your new foundling..." That little smile comes back, as Jango nods out the back of the frigate to where someone is cutting a line through the clones guarding their new prisoners. 

"Oh dear," Obi-Wan mumbles, barely having time to brace himself before Ahsoka is launching herself at him, and all he can think is how relieved he is to see her out of her slave disguise. Jango steps cleanly out of the way to let Ahsoka smother herself in Obi-Wan’s chest, though it doesn’t stop him from starting to prep bacta patches to tide him over until they can get to the _Negotiator’s_ medbay.

“Hello, little one,” Obi-Wan murmurs, carefully loosening the tight net of his shields for the first time since Zygerria and letting Ahsoka’s presence flood his mind. 

“It’s good to see you, Master ‘Nobi,” she says into his tunics, and her voice does not waver at all.

He manages a chuckle, though it does not hold nearly as well as Ahsoka’s, as he feels himself finally relax. Anakin, of course, senses the both of them immediately and prods at their minds, but neither Obi-Wan nor his padawan acknowledge him. “I take it the Queen is dead?”

Ahsoka sighs and pulls back enough to nod. “Count Dooku was there, Skyguy barely got us all out.”

“That was a week ago,” Jango adds, not looking up from the datapad he’s logging Obi-Wan’s injuries into. “Even with the Queen giving us the location of the Processing Facility, we had to wait for the 187th to catch up.”

Running his palm from the top of her head down her hind lek, Ahsoka melts back against him with a Togruta churr he rarely has the pleasure of hearing from her. “Hm, and I imagine Boba was thrilled to work with the ARC troopers.”

Jango snorts, because they both know Boba is thirteen and his rebellious stage where he wants nothing to do with his father for fear of losing his independence. “Originally, the 104th was the closest battalion, but were held up in their own campaign. ‘Honestly didn’t think we could keep Skywalker from rushing in anyways.”

And Obi-Wan has to wince at that, because no matter what he does, he can’t seem to find a way to teach Anakin about attachment in words he understands; truthfully, Obi-Wan wouldn’t have had him knighted until he had at least attempted to master that part of his mind, but, well, the War had different opinions.

“I’m actually just surprised he didn’t try to fight Dooku,” Ahsoka admits, finally releasing Obi-Wan only to hop up on the hoverbed next to him. Jango immediately pulls Obi-Wan’s bare arm back to himself to start slapping the bacta patches over the worst of his burns. “Master Windu had a talk with him, though, I think it was good for him.”

“I’d like to see that!” Jango barks, only half sarcastically: he knows better than most, the sorts of things Mace Windu can talk someone out of, and if it worked for one ex-slave, why shouldn’t it work on another?

Ah, perhaps that shared history should not have slipped Obi-Wan’s mind, not here with thousands of freed slaves needing aid for injuries Jango is intimately familiar with.

“And are you alright?” he asks before he can talk himself out of it, as Jango is cutting his sleeve further back. His brow ticks back up, clearly bewildered by what Obi-Wan could be referring to, but it’s Ahsoka that leans around Obi-Wan to sniff triumphantly up at Jango.

“I told you he still likes you,” she says, and Jango’s hand freezes on Obi-Wan’s wrist.

Obi-Wan sighs. “Ahsoka.”

But instead of denying that he might have actually had such a conversation with Obi-Wan’s padawan, Jango coughs on a laugh. “So you did, _edee._ To be fair, I did not think that was the issue.”

Ahsoka rolls her eyes, leaning back into Obi-Wan’s side as he automatically raises his arm to accommodate her. “He thinks he lost his chance, Master ‘Nobi,” she tells him. “Even Cody thinks he’s full of banthashit.”

Where Obi-Wan feels a little shell-shocked by the turn in conversation, Jango simply keeps that tiny smile — even if it looks bittersweet and self-deprecating now. “Your foundling has spent the last week talking me in circles about this, I almost think she’s as stubborn as you.”

“I’ll take that as a compliment, I think,” Obi-Wan returns, sarcasm an automatic, subconscious response. 

“I wouldn’t need to talk you in circles if you two just talked to each other.”

Shaking his head in bemusement, Obi-Wan gently fixes Ahsoka’s slika beads to lay properly around her montrals. “I’m afraid there’s quite a lot of history there, little one; most of which I’m sure Jango did not actually share with you.”

She wrinkles her nose. “No, he refuses to tell me anything except that you met on a mission. And that he saved your ass from Jabba the Hutt.”

Obi-Wan snaps his eyes to Jango, who looks absolutely anywhere but at him. “Is that how you remember it going, my dear?”

“Could we do this later?”

“Because if I recall correctly, and I _do,_ this is not the first time you’ve lost your armor to a sarlacc.”

Jango looks to the ceiling for patience.

**Author's Note:**

> a prompt fill for an anon on my tumblr @/crispyjenkins! original prompt: "fic with ahsoka as Obi-Wans Padawan? Maybe some angsty jangobi? (Used to be together but broke up and now they pine from afar™️)"
> 
> also credit where credit is due, some minor inspiration taken from @/autumnchild22's [Kenobi Tano Au!](https://autumnchild22.tumblr.com/tagged/Kenobi-Tano-AU/chrono)
> 
> title from “i didn’t smell like poppies” by w.d.k.


End file.
